IOSH 2013 – Hit the road, Jack?

In today’s complex employment marketplace, which is littered with obstacles as well as opportunities, practitioners need to give serious consideration to whether they pursue a specialist field or stick to a career as a generalist, and ensure they are ‘fit for the future’ – the theme of this year’s IOSH Conference & Exhibition.

In today’s job’s market, the employer is king, and this is not likely to change any time soon.
This was one of the points that attracted unified agreement among the panellists of SHP’s recent interactive round-table webinar, hosted as part of the Training and Career Development Live online exhibition and conference at the end of last year.1

When asked what potential employers are currently looking for in candidates for health and safety positions, panellist Tom Primrose, a health and safety recruitment specialist at Macdonald and Company, responded: “The market seems to want generalists very much more than specialists, on the basis that every penny is being squeezed. If a company can avoid getting two people on board and employ one person to do both jobs and bring even more to the table, it will tip the balance in favour of the generalist.”

Chris Packham, a specialist in dermatological safety at EnviroDerm Services, agreed that an employer looking to fill a normal salaried position would always choose a generalist, “unless you’re in a situation where the person’s specific expertise is absolutely necessary”.

Know your limitations

IOSH also expects practitioners to possess a full range of core competencies before awarding them initial accreditation, even if they specialise later, explained Hazel Harvey, the Institution’s executive director of membership. However, IOSH’s code of conduct requires practitioners to recognise the limits of their own competence. “Any generalist safety practitioner should recognise when they’ve gone into an area where they need someone with more in-depth knowledge of that area to give them advice,” Harvey cautioned.

Echoing this sentiment, Steve Perrin, group operations director at training provider SMTS, added: “You do have to realise your capabilities and knowledge, and you do have to rely on the experts.”

There are, however, potential downsides to being a generalist. Packham, who did not enter the profession via a generalist route but instead developed specialist knowledge in his particular field – dermatological safety – at the start of his career, remarked: “For me to go and obtain general qualifications would involve a lot of time and expense for knowledge I would never use.”

He used the analogy of the GP and the specialist consultant. “The GP is a generalist, a gatekeeper, and if he doesn’t know enough about a particular condition and tries to treat it, very often the patient ends up with the wrong treatment, making the condition worse – until, eventually, the consultant gets called in.”

A second career

It is a common perception that people specialise after being in general practice, once they find out what they are most interested in, or best at. But Hazel Harvey disagreed: “Actually, the reality for most people is that they come in to the profession with an area of specialisation before they get generalist qualifications. At IOSH, we get very few people who actually go into health and safety as an initial career – for most, it is a second career and they tend to have this sort of [specialist] background already.”

From an employer’s standpoint, its size, nature and diversity will come into play in deciding whether a generalist or specialist is needed. “A large corporation is more likely to have individuals with specific health and safety roles,” Primrose observed, adding that although a lot of organisations would love to have specialists in a variety of areas, it is often not financially feasible. “So they tend to veer towards getting someone qualified in several aspects of health and safety, who can turn their hand to diverse things,” he concluded.

Earning power

So, are specialists likely to earn more than generalists? The consensus seems to be that they are, but not by much. According to Packham, specialists’ rates tend to be slightly higher than those of generalists because of the amount of time, effort, learning and research that has gone into developing that specialist knowledge.

But, warned Primrose, even though both generalists and specialists are being paid only slightly more than five years ago, companies are expecting a lot more from both types of employees. “These are tough times,” he lamented, explaining that, to be competitive with other practitioners, professionals must have more than one discipline in which they can focus their efforts.

“Health and safety has become an extremely popular area to get into as people realise it is here to stay and is an intrinsic part of how a corporation works,” Primrose observed.   

Overseas advantage

If specialists are looking for much higher salaries, they may be well advised to find a job abroad. For example, the oil and gas industries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe have a huge demand for the very specific qualifications and experience of UK health and safety professionals, and do not tend to take a generalist approach, Primrose maintained.

The 2012 IOSH Salary and Attitudes survey confirms that mining and quarrying, including oil and gas extraction, was the highest paid sector for health and safety professionals, with an average annual salary of more than £69,000, compared with the arts, local authorities and education, which had the lowest, at around £34,000.

However, training expert Perrin disagreed with Primrose’s view. “In some African countries, where they haven’t got specific health and safety legislation, big oil and gas companies are looking for NEBOSH qualifications and are using UK legislation as best practice. It is a generalist attitude, even though they do have specialist advisors,” he said.
Asked why there is such a demand for people with oil and gas experience, Chris Packham offered a personal insight: “I was working in Libya, where the nearest settlement was 150 miles and nearest hospital 200 miles away. So the company felt it needed someone with specialist oil and gas safety expertise to be on site to cope with a crisis if it occurred.”

Skills and qualifications

The panel was unanimous in warning that, no matter what skills a specialist may have, it is an informal requirement that they keep up their professional development. “Just because they are specialists, it doesn’t mean they don’t have to understand the broader concepts,” Harvey said.

Warned Packham: “It is a constant process of keeping up to date. I spend a lot of time at conferences and studying the developments in my particular field, seeing which are relevant. If I didn’t do that, I would have been out of date 20 years ago.”

Asked whether his training business focuses on general management, or ‘soft’ skills, in its health and safety courses, Perrin said he advises candidates seeking to go into practice to stand up to chief executives and get companies to invest in health and safety.

Communication is key, agreed Primrose, who explained that when placing health and safety professionals in jobs, he looks for management experience and softer skills.

“Softer skills are really on the uplift,” Primrose confirmed. “In terms of very successful managerial courses, learning to communicate your issues upwards to the board and downwards to your staff and colleagues is very difficult. People may look perfect on paper, but without the ability to communicate their ideas in a clear and, above all, business-like way they are being turned down right, left and centre.”

On the other hand, if an individual feels their best skills are technical, they would be wise to avoid a job where man-management skills are required. “It is really important to understand that about yourself before you get out there,” Primrose counselled.

So, debated the panel, which are more important: qualifications or competence? Acquiring qualifications is expensive, as Packham pointed out earlier, and employers are less willing these days to fund training for their staff than traditionally was the case. Specialisation is therefore a much more viable option if you can afford to get the relevant qualifications.

The cost of maturity

Increasingly, employers expect people to have high-level qualifications before they employ them, and there are now more individuals who have achieved such standards. “The employer sets the market,” reiterated Harvey, whose statement was supported by Primrose’s observation that most employers now want candidates with chartered IOSH status, or who are at least well on their way to acquiring it. He added, however, that further development training, instead of salary rises, is now being offered by some enterprises as a point of negotiation.

Although IOSH offers an education bursary to some university students, Harvey cautioned that financial barriers to entry and progression may become tougher in the future: “One of the problems, as the profession gets more mature and more recognised, is more people want to enter it, and it will cost more to enter it.

“This is what happens, unfortunately. All professions are like that; it’s the way of the world.”

Reference
1    Practitioners can listen to a recording of the full webinar by visiting www.tcdlive.com If already registered, then simply login with your details, or, if a new visitor, click on the ‘Register for Presentations’ tab and follow the instructions.